Surprise!

Well… I figure I’ve kept it under wraps for long enough. so, without further due, meet the newest member of my family, Nico!!

”HII!! MAH NAME IS MOOP!! LETZ BE FRENZZ!!! (ALSODISMAHNOSEISNTITCUTE)

So. Yes. I got another horse! Nico, JC registered as “EL Longhorn” is a a 2016 17hh OTTB gelding 🥰

He came here around two months ago but I’m terrible at remembering to blog so… yeah. Your just finding out now… (unless you follow me on instagram that is! hehe)

But! back to Nico. He’s not been doing much of anything yet, I wanted to give him some time off after racing, and then I had to get his shoes pulled due to him having very thin hoof walls and not keeping them on, so he’s been a little tender on his feet and I would feel bad making him do anything.

I tried to give him hoof boots, but they just rubbed:(

anyways, he’s a super sweet and cuddly dude, which is what I was looking for! I’m a bit doubtful as to how well he will handle/like being an event horse (he is very clumsy + slow lol) but only time will tell! and he’s super super tho cute so that makes up for any lacking athletic abilities lol.

trying on Ollie’s saddle a couple weeks ago! (he has gained more weight since this photo was taken which I’m happy about too! he is chunking up quite nicely lol) I have one to try that will hopefully fit him better as well… I’m just trying to arrange a time with out saddle fitter to see if its a good option!

And that’s about it! not a lot going on rn with COVID. Ollie has been a bit stiff this winter so I’m trying him on a new supplement and we haven’t been doing any hard work.

not recent (from summer/fall) but had so much fun doing some bigger courses last year with Ollie…

And that’s all for now LOL. see ya in a couple months!

Hi again!!

Wowza, it’s been awhile since I last blogged! I’m really not sure where to start. If you follow me on Instagram (Maren_Eventing) then you probably aren’t too far behind on what’s been going on around here (spoiler if you aren’t on Insta, absolutely nothing.).

Brianna got some amazing pictures of my Ollie🥰

Obviously, I haven’t really been doing anything Lately because of Covid, and therefore don’t have a lot too update anyone on, but My coach opened back up for lessons earlier this month! I had a fabulous jump lesson* a week or two (who can keep track anymore?) ago, and I have another one booked for tomorrow as long as the weather corporates.

* social distancing style of course!

all the jumps got repainted and look AMAZING! Plus this fancy for sale sign one is new! Of course my little wonder pony didn’t even look at it even though we hadn’t had a serious jump school in months!! (Ok now I know I’m starting to gush about how awesome Ollie is but like… look at his adorable knees too🤩)

I think I’ll just stick a bunch more pictures from My last lesson and leave it at that for today… I really want to start blogging more again, but it almost feels like I need to do some massive update on what’s happened in the past 6 or so months? No way that’s actually going to happen so I’m just going to pretend I’ve been blogging and try too start up again. Maybe I’ll do a lesson recap sometime in the next week or so after my lesson tomorrow.

He’s like the cutest super pony ever

My blog has decided it won’t let me add any videos unfortunately… pictures will have to do for now!

Bit of an awkward jump in… this was a skinny one stride to a vertical one stride to another skinny

As you can see we barley made it over this one…

And we finished over this one! I’m not really sure when I decided that 3’5” triple bars looked jumpable but… it didn’t look that scary cantering up to it!

 

 

The most ridiculous trail ride… EVER.

Ollie is still (worryingly) a little stiff in his hind end. I’m hoping that he is just foot sore, and that when the farrier comes next week to put shoes on him (for the first time ever! I’m really curious to see what happens) he’ll start to feel better? But then, This is a horse we are talking about. And it’s never simple with these animals is it? Anyways, since he was stiff, I didn’t want to do anything to hardcore. But a nice walk trail ride with 3 minutes of trot for Tanta’s rehab program sounded great! So off Brianna and I went! The first interesting thing that happened was a big dump truck zoomed passed. But lucky, both of our horses are used to cars/trucks and nothing came of it except a couple snorts. Next. We turned off the road with the big truck and onto the small one that leads to the beginning of the trail, so we walked down the new road, and past a (in Tanta’s mind) VERY scary rock. at the end of the road I could see someone I knew walking a horse in hand. Both Ollie and Tanta clearly saw this horse, so I figured they wouldn’t spook. Lol. Famous last words. Once we got closer- directly across the road from them- my horse JUMPED into to air, then landed with his front feet… in the ditch. He proceeded to jump back out of the ditch, almost leaving me in it. It was kinda funny actually. We moved on, and nothing very weird happened for awhile. The horses were a little crazy, but It was a given considering how windy it was out.

Then, we reached the end of the trail and got to another road. I love this one road, it is generally quiet. and there is two big hills and they are perfecto for galloping up! The timing worked out great and Brianna’s alarm went off saying it was time for 1 minute of trot! So we got to trot up one hill, then we went down it, and at the base of the hill… is an old rusty truck that  hasn’t been used in 30+ years. That both Tanta and Ollie have seen SO MANY TIMES. But, guess what? Of course Tanta (who was leading) saw it and spooked all the way across the road, almost falling down the ravine on the other side. Luckily B managed to get her under control in time.  And, we proceeded. Theeeeeeen, when we could literally SEE our driveway, we were that close, a large truck turned around the bent behind us and spook Ollie like crazy. He, (surprise?) once again, JUMPED INTO THE DARN DITCH. What on earth horse? And then he and Tanta Proceeded to gallop down the road with me and Brianna hanging on.(maybe 40 feet? The bolting didn’t go on for thhhaaaaatt long… but?!?) I honestly have no idea why. Ollie has NEVER. Spooked at a car in the whole 3 years I’ve had him. And neither Brianna nor I have known Tanta to do something like that either. So… what the?!? I won’t take him out on the road if he acted like this, and he never has. Also, how come I ended up in a ditch TWICE in one ride? Ollie’s never showed any interest in jumping into ditches before today!

Total score.

ditch: 2

Maren: 0

 

Lesson recap!

haha, we were definitely overdue for this! Recently my coach has been into angled jumps, I personally love angled jumps! So I’m not complaining 😁 in my lesson just over a week ago, we did this course;

Looks super confusing on paper (on screen?) but makes more sense if you can actually see it in person.

it was very fun! But SOOOO hard to set up! Like omg, it took forever. It was making sure that all the striding was right while making sure that nothing was blocking the path of anything else that took so long! And, of course, dragging the poles and standards around. I don’t really recall much from that lesson. (Ugh, my memory is horrible) but the course I did today was this one;

Much easier to set up.

Ollie was a bit stiff in his hind end, so we decided to only do X-poles, which he seemed totally ok with! First we trotted into the second jumps in the lines, (the jump on the bottom right and then the one on the bottom left) just cutting in before the first fence and leg yielding out. Then we put the jumps together and cantered through.

 

 

Then the angled lines;

 

Then we put the whole thing together, first jumping the oxer in the middle by itself going away, then right hand turn- across the diagonal, through the vertical line, left turn across the second angled line, then through the oxer line. We had a couple “questionable” moments, but Ollie felt good! And I somewhat remembered how to ride… so overall, it was definitely a success!

How handsome is he!! ❤

 

Clear rounds day = Success!

The clear rounds day I Mentioned was on Saturday, and it went really well! I did four rounds, one at 2’3”, one at 2’6” and two at 2’9”. Ollie was super!

I did get some media, but it’s not the best as it was just a cell phone camera. Oliver is so cute though, he makes up for the not very good photo quality.

here is the video of my first 2’9” round.

 

 

And here is lots of pictures!

2’6”

2’9”

Trying to slow down… (2’9”)

2’9”

2’9”

2’6”

2’9”

The show itself was great! But remember how I said that we trail ride over? We do… and we did. However, apparently blackberry bush cutters like to work on Saturday? With their big noisy machines? And block the whole trail while chopping it down? The “absolutely nightmareish” (in the horses eyes anyway.) Tractor/chopping machine was smack in the middle of the trail that my sister and I needed to take to get to our show. Also, it was turned on.

Picture photobombed by my horse.

Ahh that’s better. (But not really…)

Clearly it was scary. We ended up having to dismount and lead our horses (Brianna was riding one of our coaches horses Foxy) past the big scary machine. Which was fine. It wasn’t a big deal… but… there was a… creek right behind the bush cutter. So we ended up walking through the creek and getting completely soaked and having our boots fill up with water. Lovely. Also take into account that all this is happening before 9am so it was quite cold out. Luckily, after the creek there was a log that we used to mount up again, and the trail ride continued without incident. Or… did it? From my house to the show grounds, is a 20-30 minute hack. You have to cross 3 creeks + 2 large lake-like puddles. At that point we’d crossed 1 creek and 1 puddle. We crossed the next puddle without a problem. Then came the next creek…

A Little History.

this is the creek that goes by the name “treacherous river”

after the “Treacherous river” is what goes by the name of “hippie campsite.” OR “party area” OR there was even one person staying there who was a Sasquatch hunter? When it is a hippie camp (that is what it was on Saturday, which is much better the “Party area”) It often has 1-5 school buses that have been converted into RVs, 1-3 tents. 1-4 cars, and a couple couches scattered around in the bushes for resting on. There is also normally at least one dog. Did I forget to mention the people? There is always lots of hippies hanging around to. Because the “hippies” don’t normally say much (just something like “heeeyyy duude.”) they are fairly scary for the horses-people hiding in bushes + mysteries dog woofing that cannot be seen + lots of school buses. It’s always fun to ride past. Haha… not.

Weeeeeee!!

also, Happy April fools everyone!* I couldn’t think up any cool jokes this year unfortunately (NOOO!!! 😫) but I read the funniest posts on Emma’s blog and on Emily’s blog. Maybe I can think up something like that next year? 😁 (hehe, beware.)

*this post is not a April fools joke, as much as I wish the hippie camp didn’t exist, it does. 😦